“Pancakes, with green berry syrup, butter, and cheese.”
“All right,” said Mathi slowly. “Treskan will make you pancakes.”
“I will?”
“I want to be paid in advance,” Rufe insisted. “Going in that camp is risky.”
The elves had flour in their supplies and maybe syrup, but Silvanesti did not eat dairy products as humans and kender did. Finding cheese and butter might be hard. Once again Mathi wished Artyrith were still there. He undoubtedly could produce pancakes from a glutton’s dream.
She explained their culinary dilemma. Rufe relented. “Have ’em by tonight,” he said.
Rufe wandered off in his aimless way, shrugging his shoulders now and then as if arguing with himself then agreeing to what he had said. Mathi and Treskan tethered the horses. Lofotan had ordered him to stand guard over them, but he had other things to do, such as finding ingredients for pancakes. Mathi suggested that he inquire with the Longwalker or the other kender. If anyone had butter and cheese in the wilderness, they would.
It was dark by the time he found all the ingredients. When the time came to cook Rufe’s bribe, there was no one around. He found Mathi seated under a lofty beech tree, dozing. He woke her quietly. She reacted by seizing his hand so swiftly, Treskan barely saw her move. She opened one eye.
“What is going on?” she said in a hushed tone.
“Nothing. I found what I need for Rufe’s pancakes, but everyone seems to be gone.”
All day the woods had seen a constant though erratic procession of kender passing back and forth. Mathi, exhausted by her long ride and their escape from the nomads’ camp, learned to ignore the restless wanderfolk as she would the pounding surf or raucous street noises. Once she was awake, the absence of kender and the silence was startling-and a bit ominous.
Releasing Treskan, she rolled to her feet. Mathi sniffed the wind. She smelled smoke. Wandering forward, she used her nose to track the aroma. The forest, so comforting by daylight, took on a strange atmosphere by night. The massive tree trunks and heavy canopy of leaves overhead made the forest floor prematurely dark. No stars or moons shone through the roof of green. When night fell, it fell hard.
She followed an erratic course in and out among the trees, turning this way and that, grasping the invisible lifeline of smoke. Treskan trailed her, puzzled but unquestioning. Mathi decided the odor was coming from a number of small twig fires, not a great pyre like what the nomads used. Treskan pointed out a glimmer of light among the trees ahead. The odor of burning grew stronger as they tracked to the light. Soon they heard the drone of voices and the snap of burning twigs.
A hollow between two rows of oaks was filled with seated kender. In the center of the smooth, shallow trench, a fire blazed. Seated around it were the Longwalker, Balif, and Lofotan.
Treskan opened his mouth to hail them, but Mathi stopped him. Something was happening, something unusual. The kender were all sitting still, facing the Longwalker and his guests. And they were listening. Mathi had never seen kender sit and listen to anyone before.
“And so Silvanos, called the Golden-Eyed, became Speaker of the Stars and Father of all his Country,” Balif was saying. “Our elder race has grown wise and strong during his reign and will grow wiser and stronger still.”
“Do all the elder folk bend a knee to the Golden-Eyed?” asked the Longwalker.
From where she stood, Mathi could swear Balif’s eyes twinkled. “All with wisdom do. No chief is loved by all.”
“True enough,” said the kender. He glanced over both shoulders at the crowd behind him. “This lot don’t love me. They don’t even like me very much.”
“Sure we do!” piped a voice from the darkness. “As long as you give us drink!”
There was much laughter. Mathi saw Balif had passed around the supply of the nectar that Artyrith had acquired in Free Winds. Kender drank from everything from cups made of rolled tree bark to battered gold goblets liberated, no doubt, from people they met on their travels.
“But what about you, Serius Bagfull? How did you become Longwalker of your people?” Balif asked. He held out a simple, clay cup for Lofotan to fill from a nearly empty skin of nectar.
“I was named such by the Eye.”
“Eye?”
The kender nodded. Fire highlighted his long nose and prominent cheekbones. “As I entered this world, the Eye spoke to me and said I would be the Longwalker of my people.”
“I don’t understand,” said Balif.
“Tell the story!” someone called. Others echoed the cry, but some of the kender objected just as loudly. Serius Bagfull, Longwalker of the wanderfolk, looked embarrassed.
“It is not a tale we tell to those not like us,” he admitted. “But the honorable general has agreed to aid us, so can we not repay him by sharing the story?”
Another mixed chorus of yeas and nays filled the clearing. The Longwalker held up his hands for quiet and received it.
“Sometimes I must act like a chief,” he said apologetically. “If you all do not mind!”
Only crickets sang in the woods. Treskan went down on one knee, opening the case of his writing board with one hand. Hand poised, he prepared to record everything the kender said.
“Time was and time is, as old ones say. Time was there were no wanderfolk in this land but in a place far gone, as far away as the opposite side of a circle. There were lots of us there, lots and lots-too many in fact, and no one had room enough to wander without bumping into another coming from another place. It was a bad time, and the people made trouble for each other out of spite and boredom. They stole-”
“Found!”
“Borrowed!”
The Longwalker cleared his throat. “They hurt each other, even killed one another. The People cried out to our makers for help, but the gods were not listening to our pleas. To get their attention, an especially clever girl named Fina decided to make a lodestone so large, it would pull the gods down from the sky. Then they would have to listen to our pleas.”
Treskan squinted in the poor light, scribbling it all down. He muttered to Mathi that kender as a race were obsessed with natural magnets. Some of them went on quests for decades, collecting every bit of lodestone they could find, filch, or finagle. Outsiders assumed kender had some daffy purpose for collecting magnets. For the first time, the origin of their obsession was revealed.
“Fina convinced her kinfolk to scour the countryside for lodestone. She collected enough to fill forty barrels. She and her cousin Rufus hauled them to the top of Mount Aereera, which was the highest peak in the land. They built a great pile of lodestone, and sure enough, after a day or so, clouds began to gather over the mountain. Lightning came down and struck the mountain all around them, turning the rocks to lodestone as well. The pull became so strong, nothing could resist it.”
“And the gods came down?” said Lofotan. He sounded a bit drunk and quite insolent. The Longwalker did not seem to mind.
“Not the gods. The Eye.”
All through the crowd of kender the word Eye was repeated with great reverence. Hearing the chant made the hair on Mathi’s neck prickle.
“What is the Eye?” Balif asked.
“The handiwork of the Makers,” the Longwalker replied. “A great oval stone in the sky, faceted like cave crystal, and the color of smoke.”
Treskan dropped his stylus. Mathi stooped to retrieve it for him.
“The Eye came down to the lodestone mountain. Though it was not bright, it burned the sky as it came. It drove Fina and Rufus off Aereera. They ran and behind them the slopes of the mountain ran like water. Great crowds of the People stood waiting for the two to return. When they saw the Eye descend, they fled for safety, but no place was safe. Houses burned, forests went up like kindling, and stone mountains melted like lead in a crucible. Fina herself was burned to ashes, but Rufus escaped.”